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  It was just as well—Emma would see that something was wrong with me, and I didn’t have the energy to lie.

  Mei-Ling and I were walking down the path toward the dining hall when I saw her. Masha. And she had two of her Guidon pals with her.

  “Oh shhhh-sugar.” I didn’t even get the pleasure of a real curse—I dared not while I was outside and vampire ears could be listening.

  I panted a few quick breaths. Focus. I needed focus.

  “What is it?” Mei asked, her eyes uncharacteristically bright. The girl might’ve been quiet, but at least she had good instincts when it came to danger.

  I didn’t have time to answer. We’d been spotted. “Acari Drew,” Masha purred. “Who’s your little friend?”

  I sensed Mei standing tall next to me. Good.

  “Mei-Ling Ho,” she announced in a clear voice.

  Speaking openly to a Guidon. Bad.

  Masha’s face lit as she glommed on to the name instantly. “Hohhh.” She walked a circle around her. “Ho, ho, ho. You having fun…ho?” Her friends snorted and snickered.

  Oh crap…Here we go.

  But Mei didn’t respond. It struck me that she must’ve heard that joke a million times growing up. Did she even register the taunts? Did she care? Either way, her nonresponse riled the older girls.

  Masha stalked up from behind, one hand stroking the bullwhip she kept looped at her hip. She leaned close to Mei’s ear and said in a menacing whisper, “Would you like to play, little ho?”

  A dump of adrenaline cleared my mind, and I reveled in it. I pushed away my hunger, but I could almost sense it in the back of my mind, like a Pandora’s box, waiting for me.

  I shifted my weight, parting my legs into a more solid stance. It was a subtle move, not so much that the Guidons would notice, but just enough to brace myself. At five two, I didn’t have as much weight behind me as the other girls and I liked to take extra precautions.

  I flexed my calf, feeling the leather boot pull. My stars were strapped in there. Finally, I’d found focus. Like a battle calm.

  But wait. I glanced at Mei. Where was her weapon? This damned headache—I hadn’t been thinking properly. I’d been so preoccupied, I’d forgotten to ask what her weapon even was.

  “She’s a ho,” one of the Guidons said with a snorty little laugh. She was rewarded by a bunch of snorty little laughs from her friends and so she added in a lower tone of voice, “Ho, ho, ho.”

  What was this, sixth grade?

  But then my roommate shocked me—shocked me more than I think I’ve ever been shocked.

  Mei-Ling turned to me and in a cold, clinical voice asked, “Does she have a tic? She keeps repeating my name.”

  I momentarily forgot my chattering teeth and felt my eyes bug out of my head instead.

  The Guidon stepped forward. Her cheeks were blotchy with outrage. “What did she say?”

  I’d been wondering the same thing. I opened my mouth to speak, but had no clue how to de-escalate.

  But then Mei piped up again, in a tone so flat she might’ve been discussing a specimen in a lab. “There are disorders that result in repetitive speech. You kept repeating, Ho, ho, ho, ho. I was wondering if maybe you had that problem.”

  I almost laughed. I was dying to let loose a hysterical half giggle. But this fire was lit and burning, and the slightest smile from me would only throw gas on it.

  The Guidon stepped into Mei’s face. I tried desperately to remember her name so I could talk her down. Pamela, Paula, Patty…it was a P. “You’re my problem,” she snarled at us.

  A thin switchblade appeared in P-whatever-her-name-was’s hand. As amusing as Mei was, I needed to bring this down a notch. I took a step toward Guidon P (Penny?) and put my hand on her arm. “Easy, cowgirl.”

  She flinched away.

  It struck me that it was overly quiet, and I glanced at the other Guidons. “Let’s all stand down, ladies.”

  Masha’s expressionless face was completely unreadable. Weird. Usually she was the one front and center in the brawling, but something had her just as wary as me.

  Mei said, “I can handle this, Acari Drew.”

  Was she totally clueless? Or would she turn out to be the gutsiest girl on the island? Either way, she took a notch up in my opinion. Though I did get the sense that this “look out for Mei” gig was going to be a whole lot more challenging than I’d originally thought.

  Masha broke her silence and took a step forward. “I think I would like to see how you handle it.”

  Crap. This was going to escalate after all.

  But then I noticed how Masha’s bullwhip was still holstered on her hip. Something had her feeling cautious. She usually took every chance she could to sling that strip of leather around.

  I decided to take a gamble. Mei-Ling was about to get herself all kinds of messed up. I was supposed to protect her—even Alcántara had said so—and at the moment, I wanted to protect her. I didn’t have the stomach to watch these girls have at her.

  “Hey, Masha,” I called. “I know you’ve got a big old girl crush on me, but there’s no need to take your fixation out on my roommate.”

  It’d come out more brightly than I’d intended, my grin wilder. What was wrong with me? I had a bad habit of being reckless, sure. But had the bond added volatile to my list of flaws?

  Masha’s eyes zoomed in on me like two little lasers. “You wish.”

  “Here’s what I wish,” I said calmly. “I wish you’d go away.” I regretted the words immediately. They somehow invoked Trinity and how she’d conveniently gone away.

  I was tired of dancing around the subject. The ghost of Trinity was out there now—I could see it in their eyes—so I faced it head-on. “You’re just pissed because you think I had something to do with Trinity. News flash, girls. I don’t give a crap about you, and I certainly wouldn’t bother to sneak around killing any of you.”

  The Guidons arranged themselves before us, forming a half circle. Damn, damn, damn. My little head-on plan wasn’t working at all. Weapons were in hands, and they were all pointed at me. I guess I did succeed with one thing: I’d called their attention away from Mei-Ling.

  I had one last shot. “That’s cool,” I said, keeping my poker face. “You can have at us, right here in the middle of the quad. But first you should figure out which one of you is going to explain it to Master Alcántara. He seems very interested in Mei-Ling here.”

  Masha got the hint. She hooked the bullwhip back on her hip with one hand and held the other out to stop Guidon—Paige! Paige was her name—to stop Guidon Paige’s approach.

  “Another time, then,” Masha said. “But be warned, Acari Drew. If the vampires are interested in Ho, then maybe you’re losing your status as their little pet. I wonder how concerned they still are about your well-being.”

  They walked on. Thankfully, it was away from the dining hall, because I was still starving, dammit.

  Mei was silent beside me. I guessed she’d want to talk about what’d happened.

  “Are you okay?” I tried to sound sympathetic, and really, I guess I kind of was, even though she’d escalated that scene herself.

  “Yeah,” she said, sounding more annoyed than scared. “Fine.”

  “Didn’t that upset you? The ho, ho thing?”

  She just shrugged. “Those girls are simple. Probably jealous.”

  “Wow. Okay. Maybe. Wait, do you mean uncomplicated simple, or simple as in dumb?”

  Her mouth flinched. A nascent smile? “Right,” she said, not really answering my question.

  “Well, either way, you were pretty funny. I mean, you were trying to be funny, right?”

  “I guess.”

  I realized I’d seen no signs of tears since that first day. If she had a problem, would I know it? “You can totally let me know if you ever need to talk. You’re always so quiet.”

  “If I’m quiet, it’s because I listen. Unlike you.”

  Whoa. Get back. I actually laughed. Was
that an insult or an observation? It didn’t piss me off, though. On an island of secrets, I liked her candor. “What do you mean, unlike me? I’m just trying to help. I wasn’t sure if you understood what was going on back there.”

  “I grew up in New York. I speak English.” Though the words carried a sting, there’d been no animosity in her voice when she’d said them.

  I stopped on the path. “Wait, Mei. Do over. I know you understand English. Jeez. I meant, you’re not used to the Guidons.” I rubbed my temples—the headache was back with a vengeance. “God, I can barely think straight.” Inhaling deeply, I faced her. “All I meant was that those girls would love to kill us—and they will if we’re not careful. They could make your life serious hell.”

  I’d lost Amanda, and keeping Mei-Ling safe felt like righting that wrong. Besides, I liked odd ducks, and Mei was shaping up to be pretty massively odd.

  “Hey,” I added, trying to lighten the mood. “We’ve gotta watch out for your hands, right?”

  She held out one of those hands, studying it. Then her eyes met mine, and she smiled. A real, genuine smile. “Right.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mei and I met up again for lunch, but this time I made it a quick one, claiming I wanted to go for a swim. She believed it, which was obvious proof that she didn’t know me at all.

  I jogged south along the coast. I had to find clues to the killer before people began looking too closely at me. I had a small window before Priti’s class and figured there was no time like the present.

  Food had done nothing to ease the gnawing in my gut. I was light-headed now, my hands shaking like I hadn’t eaten in days. It looked like my investigation would be just like everything else on this island: performed amidst the worst of circumstances. But I rolled my neck and fisted my fingers, powering through.

  I tried to focus on the real issue at hand, namely, that I had no clue how to go about investigating a murder. But I’d seen CSI. It wasn’t rocket science to deduce that, in the absence of a body, one began at the scene of the crime.

  I didn’t know about Watcher Angel’s death, but Headmaster had let spill some clues about Trinity’s. He’d said her body was found not far from the cove. That’d be Crispin’s Cove, where I’d weathered so many swim lessons. No wonder they all thought I had something to do with her death—I knew that stupid inlet better than anyone.

  I’d since heard that, like Amanda, her body had been dropped, and I decided the jagged bluffs due south to be the likeliest spot. I slowed my pace as I approached. Any worries that I wouldn’t be able to find the murder scene were for naught. Judging by all the footprints crisscrossing the area, the place had been visited more times than Disneyland. Most of the prints were larger versions of my Acari uniform boots. The morbidity of my peers never ceased to amaze me.

  I bent, then squatted, then finally lay on my stomach, peering along the rocky dirt, searching for clues. I saw none—just a few dozen sets of footprints. Like a TV detective, I wanted to rail about all the civilians messing with my crime scene.

  I stood, brushing myself off. My grand investigation would fail before it even had a chance to begin.

  With a sigh, I looked across the rocks and down to the cove, inching as close to the ledge as I dared. I wanted a better look at the site of so many of my cursed swim lessons. It was strange studying it with a bird’s-eye view, yet somehow, just then, it didn’t feel like a bad association. Rather, that cove and Ronan’s steel-jawed persistence were probably what’d kept me alive so far.

  He’d taught me so much, and I hated to admit that those damned surfing lessons had already taught me a lot, too. About patience, how to watch and wait. How, when opportunity finally arrived, to seize it with courage. I’d found it nearly impossible not to panic at the first giant wave that’d come crashing toward me. But Ronan had taught me when to act on instinct and when to act on intellect, and intellect had told me the wave couldn’t have been more than three feet high.

  He’d shown me how to see what was truly there.

  I looked away from the horizon, clearing Ronan from my mind. And it was then that I saw it. A thin smudge of brown along the thick green moss that carpeted the ridge’s outer edge.

  I inched closer, then finally just dropped to my hands and knees. Falling off a cliff would really put a damper on my investigation.

  Once, I’d had to rely on my basic tracking skills. Ever since, I’d treated it as valuable a skill as combat, keeping a frequent eye to the ground, learning how to read it as I would a story.

  And what a story these marks told.

  The deep scuff that’d called my attention was thin and deep, a dark brown slash in the thin carpet of moss. That slash represented a slender boot heel that’d been dug in violently—and recently—its owner clinging to life.

  “You fought him,” I murmured, knowing instinctively we were dealing with a him. Sympathy and an odd sadness choked me. Trinity had fought, but she’d been too weak. We all were against the vampires.

  Scooting closer, I divided the area into a grid in my mind. The evidence was faint, and to the untrained eye it would’ve looked like a normal landscape. But I’d been practicing. I read where the grass was torn, where moss had been scraped, where darker flecks of earth and displaced gravel spoke to a scuffle.

  The exsanguinations suggested the killer was Vampire, but vampires were strong. Strong enough to kill with a single snap of the neck. This predator hadn’t just murdered his victims—he’d toyed with them. This killer liked to play.

  “Right along the edge,” I marveled. She’d fought for her life while balanced on a high precipice.

  The sight brought home just what we were up against, and heaviness swept my chest till I felt my chin sink into twined fists.

  “Nice ass.”

  The male voice shattered my reverie, and I lurched up like one of those suction cup toys, instinctively springing forward so as not to tumble down.

  It was a Trainee. Rob the Trainee, to be precise. One of the clowns who’d once almost peed on me, thanks to a particularly degrading Masha hazing episode.

  If he’d come with friends, I was toast. I scanned the area behind him. Luckily there was no one else in sight. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He gave me a slow, slack-jawed once-over. “I said, nice ass, Acari.”

  “Unlike yours,” I snapped. “I’ve hated the sight of your gangly ass from the first moment I laid eyes on it.”

  “They said you were an ice queen.” He nodded knowingly, but kept his eyes half-lidded and leering. Was he trying to look sexy? “I say you just need a good thaw.”

  “What is your problem?” Standing tall, I stepped forward, figuring a good offense was the best defense. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same.” He took a lazy step toward me. “Thought you’d return to the scene of the crime?”

  I sidestepped him. He didn’t scare me. I might’ve been smaller and weaker, but surely I was smarter than Rob-the-Trainee. “I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  “That’s not what I heard.” His hand darted out, petting my hair.

  I flinched away, shuddering at his touch. “You heard wrong.”

  But then—boom—he was back, standing in front of me. Was he further along in his training? His movements seemed faster than normal. That was my cue.

  “It’s been great catching up,” I said. “But I gotta run. Class time.” I tried to dart by him.

  He grabbed my arm, stopping me, and his hand brushed against my breast. “Not so fast.”

  I tugged, fighting a growing panic. “Seriously, Rob. This has been a real treat. But I’m leaving.” I made another move to scurry around him—I refused to run away—but with another sidestep, he remained in my face.

  “Not till I tell you it’s time to leave.” He traced a brazen finger down my cheek. “I liked what I saw that day,” he said, referring to the Guidons stripping me down to my underwear. “I think I’d like to see it agai
n.”

  If he was trying to scare me, it backfired. I’d been messed with by far worse, far older, far scarier creatures than this d-bag. All my recent stress, all the uncertainty, it all fueled me. I snatched his finger, wrenching it hard till it cracked. “So not going to happen.”

  He howled and shook out his hand.

  I smiled. “Don’t hurt yourself, Rob.”

  “We vampires heal fast.” He was glaring at me with pure hatred in his eyes, prowling back toward me with hands poised like he might attack.

  I snatched a throwing star from my gym shorts. “You’re not a vamp yet.”

  He smirked at my shuriken. “What do you think happens to girls who mess with Trainees?”

  Now, there was something I’d never considered. “I’m all too happy to find out,” I lied.

  He laughed. “You’d risk your life just to keep the ice queen status?” Seeing my flat stare, he said, “Yeah, that’s right. Your life. As in, I don’t think the vamps will let you mess with one of their own.”

  “Get over yourself.” My scorn was thick, despite my creeping doubts. “You’re just a Trainee.”

  “Sure. And a Trainee is far more precious a commodity than you bitches.”

  I had to laugh at that gem. “Oh, really?” Was the guy actually trying to make me angrier?

  “Yes, really.” Rob didn’t like being laughed at. He adjusted his pants suggestively. “Time for you to take one for the team, Acari.”

  I almost snorted a laugh. Maybe he thought he was menacing, but I wasn’t taking anything for anyone. I had an idea, though, so instead I gave him a pretty smile, playing along. “You think you’re that cute, do you?”

  A smile flickered on the edge of his lips. “I know I am.”

  I shot a glance to a grassier spot away from the ridge. “Let’s at least move away from the ledge.”